SF offers rare signing bonuses amid big teacher shortage

Special education teacher George Keller helps a student balance as he writes on a whiteboard at Sunset Elementary School in San Francisco. Special education teachers are among the most in demand.

Special education teacher George Keller helps a student balance as he writes on a whiteboard at Sunset Elementary School in San Francisco. Special education teachers are among the most in demand.

Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle

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Keller assists a student with a counting worksheet during the last class of the extended school year for special education students at the school on 41st Street.

Keller assists a student with a counting worksheet during the last class of the extended school year for special education students at the school on 41st Street.

Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle

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Special Education teacher George Keller gets his student's attention as he reads them a book during the last class of the extended school year for special education students at Sunset Elementary School July 6, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif. less

Special Education teacher George Keller gets his student's attention as he reads them a book during the last class of the extended school year for special education students at Sunset Elementary School July 6, ... more

Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle

SF offers rare signing bonuses amid big teacher shortage

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Desperate to fill well more than 100 teaching positions in the next five weeks, San Francisco schools are taking the unusual step of offering signing bonuses amid a post-recession teacher shortage that is rippling across the Bay Area and beyond.

As many districts march out incentives as they compete for limited job seekers, San Francisco is offering $4,000 to special education teachers who take a job in the city. The district needs 70 such teachers, who are in short supply across the state, officials said Wednesday.

The district, which is challenged as well by the city’s housing affordability crisis, is also offering signing bonuses to special education teachers’ aides as well as veteran teachers willing to go back to school for a special education credential.

Other districts are stepping up efforts to lure teachers, offering cash incentives, seniority perks and other novel inducements to reel in qualified candidates mulling over a fistful of job offers. Labor unions — typically opposed to differential pay, bonuses or other compensation gimmicks — have given their blessing.

All told, San Francisco had about 500 teacher openings heading into the school year, stemming from a combination of retirements and resignations and the creation of new positions. As of Wednesday, the district had 117 classrooms to fill.

After years of teacher layoffs during the recession, districts have money once again to reduce class sizes and add back academic programs, which has increased the demand for teachers. Yet fewer people are entering the profession, and the supply of new teachers is at a 12-year low, according to the Learning Policy Institute, a nonpartisan education research organization.

Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle

George Keller lines up chairs for goodbye story time on the final day of the extended school year at Sunset Elementary School.

George Keller lines up chairs for goodbye story time on the final...

Fewer taking up teaching

As the recession began in 2008, almost 45,000 people were enrolled in teacher preparation programs in California. By 2013, there were fewer than 20,000, according to the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Last year, the commission said, districts hired about 21,500 new teachers, while the state issued just 18,100 new credentials.

“California is facing a significant teacher shortage, and that means we have unprecedented competition for credentialed teachers across the state,” San Francisco Superintendent Richard Carranza said Wednesday.

That competition is heating up. The Pittsburg Unified School District in Contra Costa County has one-upped San Francisco with a $5,000 signing bonus for special education, math, science and Spanish bilingual or dual-immersion teachers, who are in the greatest demand. Pittsburg will give another $5,000 if the candidate graduated from a high school in the city — a grow-your-own incentive to teach, said Superintendent Janet Schulze.

Large urban districts have been especially hard-hit, with many teachers choosing or transferring to schools or districts where there is often less poverty and higher pay.

Rich districts’ advantage

“Everybody in California knows there’s a teacher shortage,” said Chris Ungar, president of the California School Boards Association. “Sometimes what you’re going to see are districts that have a lot of property tax coming in, that have the ability to pay a little bit more, to have smaller class sizes and fewer kids in need — they may have an easier time recruiting teachers than more urban school districts.”

In Oakland, school officials are working with the Department of Education to hire bilingual teachers from Spain and Mexico. Yet suburban districts like Fremont’s also have ramped up recruiting efforts, quadrupling resources to travel to recruitment fairs across the country and advertise job openings in local movie theaters, the district said.

Many districts are increasingly relying on intern teachers — who earn a credential while teaching full time — or uncredentialed emergency teachers. San Francisco had 77 intern teachers and 67 emergency teachers at the start of the 2015-16 school year. And the district has already hired 63 emergency teachers for the fall.

San Jose Unified is seeking more stability by offering to hire veteran teachers at the same pay they earned at their old district. Typically, experienced teachers don’t want to transfer to a new district because they are required to move to a lower step on the pay scale.

San Jose puts teachers who agree to transfer on the step that matches their previous pay rate, with a cap set around $80,000 — a bit below the highest-paid teachers. This year, the district has lifted that cap for veteran special education, bilingual and math teachers.

In need of teachers

“It creates an incentive for those with higher experience coming from much higher-paid districts to come to us,” said Jennifer Thomas, president of the San Jose Teachers Association. “That way people don’t have to take a salary cut to join us.”

Yet luring new teachers to districts with bonuses or other perks isn’t a solution to the problem across California, Ungar said.

“Currently, the teacher shortage is creating a zero-sum game where districts are competing for teachers, but there are just not enough to fill the statewide need,” he said. “Retaining teachers is just critical.”

The state, Ungar said, should offer student loan forgiveness for new teachers, something previously included in the state budget. In addition, programs that guide new teachers into the profession through residency or mentoring can help ensure that young people are adequately prepared for the job.

Up to half of new teachers, many of them overwhelmed by the workload or financial woes, quit within the first five years of their career.

“Having these programs is going to help young teachers start off without a lot of debt and without a lot of worries,” Ungar said. “It’s important that we keep quality teachers and qualified teachers in the system.”